Year of the Rooster

Lunar New Year sunrise! It's nice this time of year, when sunrise happens during breakfast. And Doug made us pancakes, so that was an extra treat.



I recently found out about Tacoma Rocks, where people paint rocks and hide them in parks or other places (I found one outside Fircrest Children's Dental). Through that group I learned about Monkeyshines, which has been going on since 2004 but I'd never heard of it before. In the Year of the Monkey, a group of glass artists in Tacoma made some little treasures to hide around town. Sort of like an Easter egg hunt for lunar new year. (This is not a traditional Lunar New Year activity, but was envisioned as something fun to help chase away the gray winter blahs.) They continued it through one full cycle (12 years) and have started another. So I decided to take Kate out in the morning and hunt for a rooster treasure. We went to the Chinese Reconciliation park, down on the waterfront.



We did not find any Monkeyshines or any painted rocks, but we had a good time. There were other people out looking too, so I imagine if there was anything there it was found earlier. It's too bad we didn't know about this last year, since Kate was born in the Year of the Monkey.  That would have been fun.



Kate says, "If you want to find a rock, you have to think like a rock!"



The lions were vandalized last year. They were carved with balls in their mouths, and someone broke them to get the balls out.



We spotted this seal poking his head out of the water. (Not an uncommon sight around here, but this one had his head up for an unusually long time.)



Sleeping heron.



We stopped by the block fountain downtown (which was not fountaining). Didn't find anything there either.



We got home in time to make ddeok guk for lunch. In Korea you eat this on Lunar New Year to get a year older. (In the morning I said to Kate, "Hey, you're fourteen in Korean age now!" and she said, "No, I'm only thirteen because I haven't eaten ddeok guk yet!") I have blogged about this before where I spelled it dduk, but ddeok is more in keeping with the current romanization system. Or tteok. Here's a video about it.

Two things you should know about ddeok guk: (A) it's very filling, and (B) it doesn't make good leftovers (the ddeok goes all mushy and slimy). So you don't want to make a lot more than you can eat at once. I was planning to take some over to Anne Marie (for her daughter Kaela), and in my enthusiasm I bought the BIG bag of ddeok. I ended up with rather more than I needed, even for two families. So then I had to find someone else to share it with. Next time I'll make a bit less.

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